The Corrections (2001)
Three and half Stars out of Five
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen created for himself and his book, The Corrections some unwanted notoriety in
2001 when he reacted coolly to his book being selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book
club; she took offense; he back pedaled; and voila, instant marketing program.
However, that being said, I think I have to agree a little with Franzen, why
did Oprah choose this book for her book club? She has chosen a wide variety of
books, many with a focus on the family, and perhaps that is the reason The Corrections was chosen; but my
goodness, what a family is depicted in this book.
The patriarch of the family is Alfred. As the book progresses,
he is increasingly demented as a function of his advancing years. His wife,
Edna spends her life frustrated and controlled by Alfred, and then tries to
compensate by correcting all around,
especially her three adult children: Gary the banker, Chip the English
professor/writer, and Denise the successful chef. Alfred and Edna live in their
upper-mid western home town of St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes).
Their offspring have fled to Philadelphia in the case of Gary and Denise or
to New York (and elsewhere) in the case of Chip. All five of these people are
carefully drawn characters by Franzen, but they are all also personality avatars
of a sort; avatars that share one thing beyond their family connections– they are
uniformly unpleasant individuals.
Franzen is an extremely skillful writer and has often been listed
amongst America’s best new writers. He has with this book demonstrated that
skill by creating five vivid depictions of five very different souls, disagreeable
ones to be sure. He uses a multi-lineal story telling technique to describe
each of the principal characters (plus a few ancillary ones) that masterfully
interweaves these stories/lives in a way that creates a very complete picture
of this family. The best thing about this book is indeed Franzen’s ability to
tell these various stories and parallel timelines in a manner that will
intrigue most readers. What may disappoint most readers are the images he
creates of these five characters.
Alfred is throughout his adult life (dementia or no) a
controlling, sexually constrained former Kansan who works as a civil engineer
for a local rail road company. Like the condescending tone the author uses in
describing all the characters throughout book (up to a point just shy of the
closing pages), Alfred lives his life living on a high moral plane. He bolsters
this self-image with self-told tales of his competency in all areas of life,
even those beyond his pristine sense of moral piety. This pious self-image does
not originate in the church, but rather in Alfred’s own mind. However, the
details of Alfred’s psychological origins remain disappointingly vague. His
effects though are displayed in vivid detail; Alfred’s influences on Edna are probably
the most corrosive of his mal-effects.
Edna is herself a bright and capable person (or was one once), but one so
constrained by Alfred’s influence, that she turns towards an all-encompassing
desire to correct everyone around. She bluntly criticizes her children and even
plays one off the other by playing favorites. Her character throughout the book
is the most damaged by Alfred and is easily the most disagreeable. Her three
children range in age and character from the arrogant Gary to the
self-destructive Chip to the self-hating Denise. Each of the three children's story arcs is
described in terms that can only be likened to a train wreck. Franzen builds up
their surrounding scenery, puts them on an arc, and then lets the reader know
in clear and certain terms that personal disaster awaits each of the three. But
like their mother and father, you will not find yourself hoping for the best
for any of them. Rather you will find yourself cringing as you await the
inevitable collapse of their various worlds. You may find yourself wondering
why you continue to read about these unlikeable and un-relatable characters.
Corrections is
normally used as a description for a dramatic change in the stock market following
a long bullish period – in other words, life has been good for the investor,
but will now take a steep down turn. Besides its conventional use near the end
of the book, this term as a metaphor clearly also applies to the three children:
each has in the beginning of their adult lives experienced some success, but is
now destined for a fall, largely due in each case to the severe limitations of
their personalities. The idea of their lives as a train wreck is somewhat
foreshadowed by their father’s career with a mid-western rail road, itself
destined for a fall. Of course, another way of using the word corrections is as
a synonym for a penal institution – and this use as yet another metaphor if
also pretty apt. Edna has damaged each of her children to the point that they each live their adult lives in a kind of correction institution of the mind.
One curious side aspect of this book is that Franzen has
infused throughout the book a considerable amount of extraneous information (e.g.
cooking, rail road signals, some pseudo-science from neurology and
neuro-chemistry, and others); this is often interesting and indicative of a
fair amount of side research by Franzen. These side steps don’t really add or
detract from the novel, but they did make me wonder what the point was; is this
book intended as a morality play, a comedy, some odd, gothic picture of modern life in
America. This latter point is one I kept coming back to as I moved through the
book, whether I was considering some mundane aspect of what Edna ate for
Christmas breakfast or what was the message from Alfred’s hurtful influence on
all concerned. What is the intended style and point of this book?
The book does include some comic elements such as Chip’s attempt
to con people into buying Lithuanian sand and gravel before the coming sand and
gravel shortage becomes too acute. But this is hardly a comically turned book;
rather it is a very well written character study. However, other than Alfred’s
mental disintegration, it has virtually no over-arching plot or character evolution.
The book focuses on Edna’s final state that comes courtesy of Alfred, but
really doesn’t describe the path taken by her to get to her always critical/correcting
view of the world. With respect to the three children, two have by the book’s
end, moved to a better place, both physically and spiritually; but like with
Edna there is no real depiction of that transition.
If we return to the idea of a character study and the
secondary idea of how one person can affect those around him, then I remain disappointed.
When I look at problems and I see something that is broken, I want to know more
about how that something became broken. If Alfred is the axle on which this
story turns and is that broken part affecting and breaking the four parts
connected to him, I want to know more about his origins. I just did not gain a
good understanding of where Alfred came from, only where he ends up.
Bottom-line, a well written story on many levels, but ultimately it left me wondering
what the point is.
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